‘Parasite’ Deborah Barker moved herself into a pensioner’s home before racking up a £1,400 on his bank card.

The 33-year-old mum pushed her way into the stroke victim’s Bentilee house and made it clear he could not turf her out.

She then exploited the vulnerable 70-year-old to steal more than £500 cash.

Barker – who even made the OAP give her a key – also gave the victim’s bank card and pin to a man who used it to rent rooms at the Holiday Inn, withdraw cash from a petrol station and buy drink and food from the Harvester pub.

Teenage drug-dealer Adam Williams has been locked up for three years after being caught with wraps of heroin and crack cocaine.

Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court heard that police raided a property in Dorchester Walk, Bentilee in April last year, and found plastic bags containing both class-A drugs, along with mobile phones, £945 in cash and digital weighing scales.

There were eight wraps of crack, with a street value of £80, and 42 wraps of heroin, with a street value of £420.

'Mean' burglar Sharon Sparkes tricked an elderly couple into allowing her inside their home before stealing a jewellery box containing three watches.

But the couple, in their 70s, became suspicious and challenged the 39-year-old as she came down their stairs and she eventually handed over the box.

Four days later the defendant stole a purse containing £140 from a woman's handbag in a cafe at the intu Potteries shopping centre.

The next day the defendant, who was under the influence of monkey dust, walked into an occupied house in Northwood and was arrested by police at the scene. She was found in possession of the homeowner's medication at the police station.

Three men have been jailed after they armed themselves with a knife, hammer and a scalpel and planned to ‘cut off a man’s balls’.

Zackery Podmore, aged 26, Chandler Gallimore, aged 18, and Jordan Burton, aged 19, were overheard plotting their attack by a young woman. Burton was seen to conceal a knife in his rucksack and Podmore threatened to harm their intended victim.

A thieving mum-of-two with 148 offences bought £73 of chocolate at three shops – after finding a bank card on the floor.

Serial offender Donna Keegans spotted the debit card on the ground before spending £30 Tesco in Hartshill, £23 at May Bank Booze, and £20 at another store in Basford in the space of 20 minutes in the run up to Christmas.

But the 37-year-old – who takes heroin and cocaine three times a week – went to the police station to admit what she had done after being told there was CCTV of her in one of the stores.

Trucker David Wagstaff has been locked up after causing the deaths of eight people by careless driving on the M1.

The 54-year-old was driving on cruise control and talking to a friend on bluetooth for about an hour when he failed to see a minibus trying to get around a lorry which had stopped for 12 minutes on the inside lane of the motorway.

His Fed Ex lorry ploughed into the minibus, pushing it into and under the stationary HGV.

Prolific offender Shiv Mohindra has been jailed after he took out credit cards in another man’s name and stole £3,100 from his account.

The 38-year-old - who has more than 150 previous offences including 121 for thefts or frauds - was released from jail last December and went to live with his dad who shared a house with the victim in Dresden.

But within a week he had applied for credit cards in the victim’s name and carried out numerous transactions to withdraw £3,100 from his account.

Convicted paedophile has breached his court order – after going out with a woman who has children.

The 30-year-old is barred from having any unsupervised contact with children under the terms of his Sexual Harm Prevention Order.

But the defendant - who was jailed for three years in 2009 after admitting two charges of indecently assaulting a child and one charge of sexual activity with a child - breached the order by striking up the two-year relationship with the mum.

It is not the first time he has fallen foul of the rules, as he was sent back to prison in 2011 when he was seen talking to two 15-year-old girls near Hanley's Potteries Museum and Art Gallery.